


Fairytales and Fancies

by blood_and_gore



Series: Originals [1]
Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Original Work, Rapunzel (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Apocalypse, Bedtime Stories, Deities, Fairy Tale Elements, Gen, Gods, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Magic, Magical Realism, Mythology - Freeform, Original Mythology, Pantheism, Prose Poem, Religion, Self-Insert, Story within a Story, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, Warning: Donald Trump, Well I mean it's implied, and i mean strongly implied, christopaganism, death personified, magical flowers, obvious self insert
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2019-10-05 11:41:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17324366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blood_and_gore/pseuds/blood_and_gore
Summary: a series of short fics on religion, folklore, and science. literary references abound.





	1. The Death of the Modern Era

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter One, from the following prompt: "You have the ability to quite literally cry a river of tears. More than a river, actually - a sea large enough to drown the earth. You keep your emotions in check for decades, trying to avoid catastrophe… until, the person you love most in the world dies."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: references to current politics, implied/referenced murder and self-harm

_"Hundreds of years ago, the Lightning Age was in full swing and there was a city-_   
_A city of electricity and concrete. In this city, there was a boy made of paper and covered in ink..."_

                                                                                    When this boy was a child,  
                                                                               He pricked his finger on the stem of a rose. It was a magic rose, with petals of the deepest royal blue,  
                                                                                    Thorns sharp enough to draw blood instantly.  
The boy cried- and he cried- and cried- until he was wading in the sea of his own making, and a storm came about.

Long after, he returned to the garden. The flower had gone, though the tears were still evaporating.

And from then on     he knew that, were he to let them fall, his tears would cover the world in blue-black and drown thousands.

Alas, this was the Lightning Age,

And times could only get worse and worse;  
One day, an evil man- nay, a monster- took power and pretended he imposed its will upon the land.

                                                                                                                        The monster’s poison spread easily

_-For other leaders were already corrupt and easily led to more corruption-_

                                                                                                                                                                     And after a time, the monster had poisoned the whole world.

_("Wait-"_   
_“Hush, child.  
_ _I’m not yet finished telling the story”.)_

The paper boy did what he could to survive, and was able to find lodging and food by singing aloud the words written upon his soul.

But not all were so lucky. Indeed, many burned.

Paper easily succumbs to flame, and whenever one person tried to pull another out of the inferno, they often would themselves fall in; meanwhile, the monster laughed as the world lit with hellfire.  
                                 Nevertheless, the paper boy went on, saving others when he could, dreaming of revolution but keeping his head down out of fear. He bound his breasts and took the potions to keep his soul alive, and he learned the songs of water and air. Then _yet another_ tragedy struck-

 _("Aye, for it wouldn’t quite be right to say “tragedy struck” when all was tragic."_  
 _"Why are you talking like that?")_ You see- the paper boy, now grown into a Singer, had a Lover.

                                               A wood nymph, a being with elder-dark eyes and oaken skin and lips as sweet as maple syrup.

They created music of unimaginable beauty  
                                                             Until the tragedy.

One day the Singer arrived home to find his Lover absent. For three days and nights between he worried, and then found that his worst fears had come true. Disciples of the monster had burned his Lover, taken his life away.

The Singer stood alone in the room where he lived. Where they had lived.

     After hours of this,  
                                        He bowed his head and closed his eyes and cleared his throat,  
                                                       And when he raised his head a rose floated in the air before him-  
A rose as blue as the winter sky, wine-dark as the sea, vivid as elderberries, piercing as the eyes of his beloved.

Looking at the rose, he opened his mouth to sing but found he could do naught but wail.

From his eyes poured tears, clear and shimmering, to fill the room and pour out from the building into the street. Years of tearless pain came to a head and spilled out to voice their anguish to the world. After three days- _("-and nights between, of course,")_ the monster heard of this and decided to see for itself.

By the time it prepared to leave,  
The flood had reached its wicked throne. The monster climbed to the top.

                    For three days and three nights between _("I've said it thrice, child. Do you know what that means?")_ the Singer cried. And at the end of this time, water had drowned all the evil beasts of fire.    The oceans had risen, as prophesied,  
                                                                                                    But all innocents had been spared while thousands of monsters had drowned in blue-black inky tears.  
And the Lightning Age had come to an end, and a new Era began.

The Singer hid away, emerging once in a long while to help with the revolution,  
And the name of each of those burned by the monsters appeared on the paper of his skin as if by magic.  
Every time the Singer learned of another fallen paper child, he added their name. And so they would join his song, a Requiem for the lost.

     The legends say he still sings their names, and adds ink to his body as the years go by. They say that the names appear in the flower petals on his back and sheet music on his shoulder, beneath the scar tissue on his chest on arms that healed in the flood's magic.

Not all lived happily ever after, as that is not how living goes. But when the monsters were finally gone, the Earth healed and the people did too.

_(“Dad, that’s a boring story. Tell us a superhero one next?”_   
_“Who says it’s a story? Time for bed.”_   
_“Okay, Dad._   
_Hey, is that a new tattoo?”)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original version: http://crowned-in-stone.tumblr.com/post/179232579533/writing-prompt-s-you-have-the-ability-to-quite


	2. Running From Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "They say you can’t run from Death, but I’ve been drifting through the empty blackness of space for hundreds of years."

They say you can’t run from Death, but I’ve been drifting through the empty blackness of space for hundreds of years.

Maybe more. Who knows? Certainly not the living.

The living: corrupt and holy and beautiful and evil and varied. Killing each other, hurting each other. All too often in the name of deities, all too often for the purpose of wealth or hate, or perhaps subconscious attempts to curb their overpopulation.

That was My fault, you know- the instinct to survive. I don’t usually tinker with the automatic processes of evolution, but I of course decided to experiment. Just to see what would happen, you see. The biggest mistake ever made among us creators.  
I gave them the need to continue. To reproduce, to consume.

I gave them too much, and now they’ve taken over. It isn’t fun anymore- watching My own world isn’t even entertaining anymore.

And now Death, My parent, the oldest entity, finds and reminds me every so often that my time has been up.

The rest of the gods still exist, albeit hanging on a starry thread. Belief in them has been better these days. I won’t pretend i’m not bitter, though they’re My children and friends, though they're Me.

And I? Humans are giving up. Oh, they still believe, perhaps more than ever before. Many are realizing that all of the mythology that ever was, truly was, and that history and faith and science run together like the water. But I am hated above all, cursed. Lack of love is what kills us- Life has disowned Me, and Death will soon cease Their lenience and force Me to fade.

I welcome it. I no longer anticipate what is to come, and My children may be able to change things for the better. I do not wish to witness the carnage that will soon be wrought.

I am a God no longer, and Death won’t give me any more chances.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://crowned-in-stone.tumblr.com/post/159946632648/writing-prompt-s-they-say-you-cant-run-from


	3. Rapunzel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the truth: Rapunzel is a boy. The false-witch reminds him that hair is precious above all else, and only she may pull it out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for: implied/referenced self-harm, child abuse/grooming, and bullying. Implied gender dysphoria. Mentions of poison and curses. Vague allusions to religion. Mentions of mental/neurological illness, particularly trichotillomania.

This is truth, truth and nothing else:  
Rapunzel is a boy.  
                                                                           He seldom ventures outside the designated walls, for fear of being discovered. The false-witch reminds him again and again that hair is precious, hair above all else, and only she may pull it out.

He is seven, and the false-witch asks the forest god what is wrong with her daughter (who does not yet know he is not a daughter.) The forest god does not reply.

She tells him that he is weak, he is worthless. Slurs tumble from an unwearying mouth, forgotten mere minutes later.  
                                                                                                            Rapunzel complains to the knight that stands outside the tower doors, sometimes. They are kindred spirits, of a sort.  
                                                                                                            (The false-witch punishes Rapunzel for lying.)

 _"This is a marriage ring. We're married now, forever. You are mine and mine alone."_ Rapunzel is eight years old and he wears the false-witch's token in garnets and silver on his left thumb. He does not tell a soul about that day, for he can barely remember it himself.

At eleven, he slices up his arms, great wide bloody smiles on oaken skin that let him feel as though he has power over something,

                                                                        anything     in life.

At twelve, he slices bangs into his hair, dyes it purple, matches them with pink headphones,  
                                                             and storms back out into the world. The false-witch sleeps outside his door in case he misbehaves again, and tears down song lyrics from the walls.

His thirteenth birthday is spent acing a test he was not meant to take. His arms bear sorrow again; he goes off to a sanctuary (carried on the merit of a useless test score, meets others of the same sort, sheltered or privileged or abused, and sleeps alone for the first time in years. Briefly, he is free.  
                                                                                                                                                                     It does not last.

He leaves the sanctuary along with everyone else, and the false-witch scrutinizes the other children  
                                                                                           until she finds the perfect disguise  
                                                       with which to follow them with a poisoned Apple  
computer. Her little hexes come through as friend requests and comments;     Rapunzel must now say only what she wants him to.

The first false-prince Rapunzel falls in "love" with has no idea who really came up with the words being typed through the computer.  
(The false-prince would probably not care.)

The knight goes to the sanctuary and meets a boy. He comes out to Rapunzel three weeks after summer camp ends, during a TV marathon.

The second false-prince is another kindred spirit, one with even more violence in his soul than Rapunzel himself has ever been. He finds seven swan princesses over the course of their eight-month love affair, and turns them all to sinking gold.

(Rapunzel floats. He always has.

 _"I think I might be transgender,_ " he does not say. )

He is fourteen and then fifteen and heartbroken-heartbreaking the entire time.

(The lying false-prince nearly shoots up the poison garden.  
One month later, Rapunzel punches a bully in the neck.)

He exchanges one poison garden for another. Only this time, he doesn't realize until it's far too late to purge himself of poison.  
(They trained him out of purging, anyway.)  
                                                                    There's a princess.       Isn't there always?    She's Dorothy of Oz, stuck in. . . well, not Kansas, but their town feels not much different than any old film. The princess may have been able to love him, once; now, who knows? She loves the knight far better, thinks Rapunzel's with the knight anyway.

(Because Rapunzel's a girl everybody knows that girls and boys can't be friends. ((The knight can't possibly be gay, everyone knows that.)) Rapunzel's a girl _girl girl girl girl never be never be anything but this)_

                                  The next summer sanctuary is kinder. Rapunzel sings arias on a stage for three thousand people, and it is glorious. Audience members cry. High E flats are held for three measures, and he doesn't even flinch at wearing skirts and dresses. He is sixteen, and he is happy. He's _happy_. (He's happy, right?)

Back to the poison garden. _life is a cabaret, old chum_

And he dies, dies for just a few sweet minutes of blissful almost-oblivion, and lies in a coma _(a dream of a waiting room with white blank walls and a few other people who won't look at him or speak to him and this is hell this is purgatory it's all in your head stop stop get out)_ for three days before waking, like the god he almost imagines himself to be.

They lock him up again in a brand new fortress for one month. He's seventeen,  
                                                                                                                          and he misses opening night of _Cabaret_.                   In fact, he misses the full performance run.

(He meets a princess who didn't know she was a princess til a year ago, and, though they've known each other for less than two days, he finally tells her.

 _"I think I'm transgender."_ he finally, finally says.)

He's freed after a month. He sings again, and with luck on his side he goes to the cheap haircut place near the poison garden and asks them to shave it.

_"Trichotillomania. Basically, I pull out my hair. It's kinda like Tourette's mixed with OCD and self-harm."_

_He gulps, before saying the next part. "And anyway,_ _I'm trans. I was gonna cut it off at some point."_

His head is impossibly, blissfully light. Weight off the shoulders.

Back to the sanctuary. A white blouse and skirt for the jazz concert, a suit for the chamber one, a Nirvana t-shirt and cargo shorts at the piano. He sings Musetta from _La Boheme_ , seduction meshed with sarcasm, and it's a smash hit. He wears a tuxedo. Pronoun changes are easy in Italian.

_this soiled world_

goes the Whitman wail.

In the poison garden, that autumn, he goes back into the closet and the knight stops talking to him.

(How is he supposed to know how to deal with people? How is he supposed to automatically know someone's body language, or the nuances of voice? Onstage it's fine, but in real life he is autistic and Tourette's-ridden and a human disaster and he can't help but pull out his hair whenever it grows back in. He is borderline and he is obsessive and it is _wrong_ to expect him to simply _understand_ everything so easily when he so clearly doesn't,  
when he needs help that the garden refuses to give.)

The knight spreads a rumor. Dorothy of Oz stops talking to him. He hears every word.

He leaves the poison garden.

Eighteen and locked up for the ninth time, this time of his own volition. He stays three months.

The rose garden is lovely. There are vipers, of course, but he can manage.

                                                                                  (He stays, and then he leaves halfway through the third semester. Comes back for the fourth, and that's when the viper strikes.)

He's twenty years old and still reading everything he can get his hands on, even if he's anxious and afraid and always at home. He reads of curses, of spells to make a person regretful or kinder.  
              Some spells, they require blood.  
                                                                                So he goes in and pricks the false-witch's finger at night. He casts circles under a new moon, and buried a bloodstained rusty silver-garnet ring on hallowed earth, and he sings rage and horror and _shame_ into the forest just beyond the backyard.

This is what he realizes, over the course of his own childhood: not everyone is made for plants. Not everyone's meant to get along with them.

Rapunzel is the witch now, in a Harlem apartment with no backyard and less worry than a house. He binds his chest and wears a pronoun pin; he pays his own rent, makes his own money. It's not much but it's no one else's.

                                                Sometimes the hair grows back, and when that happens he dyes it before shaving it off again a few weeks later once the pulling gets bad and bald spots show. In the meantime, he doesn't pull out his eyebrows quite as much anymore.

                                                Sometimes there's makeup, but it's been three years since the last skirt or dress. There are men and women and others who come and go in his life; he kisses a celebrity backstage at a dive bar show in Brooklyn-

 _("it doesn't bother you?"_ he asks. _  
_the reply: _"you're still a guy, even if people once thought you weren't.")_

-and he spills coffee on another on the train. He sings, and he plays, and it isn't glamorous but it's enough and it is _his._

                                                                                                    (The false-witch wastes away right on schedule; when the time comes, he will be appropriately silent,  
                                                                                                    and when he is alone he'll drink to remember himself and forget her. It won't be long now.)

He is twenty-one. Tourists ask him for directions, and he even gives them. Someone asks for his autograph after a show, and he gives it even if it doesn't quite sink in until later. Sometimes he sits in the park-

But never in gardens, for they are dangerous places to be.

(The forest god welcomes him with open arms.)

This is the truth: Rapunzel has always been a boy. His name does not matter, for he is nameless. His clothing does not matter, for he is formless and ancient and wild. He is of the forest and not of the garden, and the roots of his head may be damaged but they are healing. He is tattooed and scarred and no one will ever tell him what to do with his body again.

He is a witch, and the false-witch cannot hurt him anymore. This is the truth. This is absolution.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trichotillomania is a Body-Focused Repetitive Behavior Disorder (BFRB,) arguably the most well-known one and possibly the most common. Basically, it's when you have the compulsion to pull out your hair- this can also apply to eyelashes, eyebrows, body hair of any kind. It's estimated that between 2% and 4% of the world population have it, but data is scarce because of the immense shame people with BFRBs can have. Which is kind of fucked up.
> 
> If you have trich, another BFRB (skin picking, lip chewing, nail/cuticle biting,) a tic disorder, autism, or any other kind of neurodivergence: you're fucking amazing and deserve to not be ashamed. I would know, I have all of them and I'm awesome.
> 
> If you think you might have a BFRB and would like support/info, feel free to message me, comment, or check out https://www.bfrb.org, an organization I volunteer for.


	4. The God of Luck

_Okay_ , I tell myself,  _start small_.

On Monday morning, a psych student wakes up early with a spring in his step. (Metaphorically. He hasn’t actually gotten out of bed yet. But for some reason, he wants to. There’s an odd optimistic feeling floating around in his head.)

On Tuesday, a theater kid rushes to an audition, only to be taken aback at the words flashing on their phone.

The words are quiet encouragements: things like  _remember to take your meds_ and  _please drink some water_  and  _you said you’d go to the gym today_.

Wednesday brings a class that the computer science student keeps skipping. Her words are a reminder in loopy cursive on the wall, gone so fast she assumes it was her imagination. (She goes to class.)

Thursday’s words include a reminder to attend a therapist appointment.

_(”I’ve been praying,” the patient tells the therapist. “I’m not sure if it’s actually helping, but- I think it might be.”)_

The human I pick on Friday gets her words in Braille. On Saturday, it’s whispered aloud in the song he listens to just after a long and tiring recording session.

And on Sunday, God rests.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt fill. originally posted at http://crowned-in-stone.tumblr.com/post/183950996325/writing-prompt-s-you-are-an-ancient-god-of-luck


End file.
